Taking Sides: Genesis 1970-1977 Vs. Genesis 1978-91

It's no Buy Me a Condo.

*I can see how Genesis/Phil ballads might be controversial, but this is a lovely song, imo, that bridges '70s Genesis and '80s Genesis really well.

Invisible Touch played a strong ballads game too imo

Funny that even at their prog height, Phil's singing about some bird that broke his heart ("More Fool Me").

Abacab is my favorite genesis but i definitely have a lot of time for the s/t. I thought everyone loved "That's All"??? A superb beatles homunculus with a nifty guitar solo I can sing from memory. I'm gonna play this album next!

In general, first wave prog bands going noo wave was a great thing IMO.

I never thought of it as Beatles-y, I always heard That's All as corny faux honky tonk. I like Phil's drumming on it a lot, though, and I like the ... bridge?

IDK it has always had a weird kind of abbey road vibe for me?

Another nice tidbit on that track -- the sort of attackless liquid guitar arpeggios that fade in and out under some iterations of the chorus

Fucking garbage piano sound though, I feel like prince had an unsupportable fondness for this same sound

also something has happened and i seem to be able to tolerate illegal alien now? WTF. It has such a good leslie lead hook!

re my second sentence, it sounds like he is fingerpicking on an actually pretty dissonant chord but it's just so compressed and liquified it doesn't call any attn to itself

"Heathaze" from Duke gives me some feels.

I love "Afterglow" from "Wind & Wuthering," where it just keeps washing into new waves of lovely. Superb use of a fade-out, too. That album has "Your Own Special Way" on it, too. "Trick of the Tail" has "Ripples." Ballads might just be this band's forte. Of course they rocked, too, but in a really particular way.

Speaking of Mike Rutherford, he not only stuck out in Genesis as the only non-virtuoso member, but in the world of prog at large it's pretty unusual to have such a relatively modest lead guitarist. He's a neat bassist, though. His playing on "No Reply at All" is cool.

A Trick of the Tail may be my favorite Genesis record of all.

Squonk!

Yeah ToTT and W&W are the two best Genesis albums for me. Banks was in his prime as a songwriter and Collins' vocals are just perfect.

"Heathaze" from Duke gives me some feels.

Yes! Duke might be my favourite Phil-era studio album.

+1 for Squonk!

The Invisible Touch tour was actually my first concert, and digging backwards through the Genesis catalog was my first music-geek moment (they lost me when I got to about Nursery Cryme).

So with that disclosure in mind, I think the pre-1978 stuff was objectively better, but it was also pretty much for dudes only. I once read an interview with some musician (can't remember who) who said something along the lines of "all music has some sex in it. if you don't, you just end up like Genesis". And I think this quote was referencing the side-long prog suites, not the AOR pop moments. I still have a soft spot for a lot of the later era stuff (Behind the Lines, Follow You Follow Me, Misunderstanding), but the stuff I'm more likely to revisit now is the older stuff.

"they lost me when I got to about Nursery Cryme"

you only have to go back one album after that! two I guess if you really want to

Re: Mike Rutherford basslines, I've learned to love his mod noodling on the Fountain of Salmacis.

FWIW, as far as prog goes Genesis I think is among the most ... sensitive? That is, as dude-y as prog is, imo it's a far cry from more macho stuff like King Crimson or Van Der Graaf Generator or even fussy stuff like Yes, let alone the cock-prog of ELP. Genesis has all that folk/pastoral stuff, and of course, again, actual ballads. At least pre-1980 Genesis. After that, yeah, even the ballads are sort of neutered AOR generic, as much as I love them.

"Paperlate" is such an overlooked/forgotten gem. Until last week I thought that "Inside Out" was another forgotten Genesis-with-horns gem, but then I remembered it was on "No Jacket Required."

Sure you're not thinking of "Inside and Out"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyeUizLp1rk

Yeah ToTT and W&W are the two best Genesis albums for me. Banks was in his prime as a songwriter and Collins' vocals are just perfect.

yes these two are fantastic. a recent relisten through the whole Genesis catalogue really boosted those two in my mind while revealing some of the early stuff I had previously liked as being a bit spottier than I remembered. the supposed double that W&W could've been which included some of Hackett's material and the tracks from Spot the Pigeon (how did those get cut??) would've been incredible.

IMO the later stuff goes Abacab > Genesis > Invisible Touch, even though Abacab really does go to shit on the last couple tracks. "Dodo/Lurker" is exactly what New Wave prog was meant to sound like.

otm

i find w& w so dreary, though i love the instrumentals. but blood on the rooftops is too too bleak - maybe being english i'm too close to it - and all in a mouse's night is just twee rubbish.

selling england by the £ still their most solid one for me.

xpost No, this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-IpCQp5Wdw

This is the only Hackett (Rutherford co-write) solo track that came really close to getting on a Genesis album, no?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SEgJtq2JjU

Though obviously Phil and Mike are on the album.

yeah, as far as I know that was written for foxtrot or something and didn't make it.

It's interesting how closely PC/PG/Genesis careers evolved in tandem, as though they were permanently yoked to each other. PC/PG's 1980-81 gated-drum breakthroughs (with matching stark album covers), their 1986 commercial peak, the early '90s New Jerseys (Can't Dance/Us) that were moderate hits but signalled career declines.

Not to mention that their voices could sound a lot more dissimilar.

Collins on the Melt album definitely helped that along

Though Gabriel had a decent simulacrum in Jerry Marotta.

I'm as guilty of missing this as anyone, but Collins only plays drums on 2 tracks on Peter Gabriel III.

oh really - I actually thought it was all drum machines, under Phil's direction

Huh? Nope. Mostly Marotta. I think only Games Without Frontiers has drum machine? The crazy end of that, supposedly, is the sound of Marotta throwing his drums around the studio, which Lillywhite then sped up.

BTW, that's Jerry Marotta, second from left!
http://expose.org/assets/img/features/783/orleans-waking-and-dreaming-1976.jpg

Foxtrot and A Trick of the Tail are the only LP's I can really listen to in full these days. I like at least one track from each of their LP's, though.

right on. been a long time since I pulled out PG3 - will have to rectify

"Dance on a Volcano" is the shit

In which I discuss one of the worst songs recorded.

Get this stat: every Genesis album through We Can’t Dance outsold its predecessor in England, an unsurpassed record.

whoa, I didn't know that. that's what, 14 straight albums?

I thought I was getting bored of this band earlier this year, but Duke and particularly Invisible Touch sounded phenomenal last time I heard 'em.

Even parts of And Then There Were Three. "Many Too Many" has the misty fall atmosphere of Wind & Wuthering.

still my fave genesis song. from my fave genesis album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdJkOMYzVFE&list=RDTzL-up4ZKgI&index=2

There's a dude at the bar that looks like a super tanned Mike Rutherford.

https://open.spotify.com/track/3qmYlsTbC9CD9SGoVmaEDa?si=KBxsIwV0RV2WfJMWvsv7jA

Tonight Tonigjt Tonigt is almost 9 minutes long. Settle in

I have no idea what year it's from and I'm not looking it up but I've had That's All in my head for well over a month now and I think I'm going to lose it soon.

TBF it's a solid jam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzyn60Zns-E

For a while I hated it but now I think I like it again. I still think it sounds like something from The Muppet Show.

I like it a lot. It has a jaunty late beatles whiff to it and I dig the subtle liquified guitar chords daubed in here and there

I love the drums. Sounds like it might be all Simmons pads, but some of his fills are super tight and fluid, especially for rudimentary electric drums of the era.

there's been an awful lot of phil about lately. maybe because of his tour, but I seem to hear him out and about more often than I have in years, including this song, which I heard in a walgreens yesterday (and I love that song)

1976-1986, say.

you didn't